The severe service conditions of die casting operations cause the dies, which are commonly made of H13 die steel, to suffer frequent failures. One method of extending die life, the use of coatings to improve wear resistance, has shown promise.
The primary goal of this project was to evaluate selected candidate coatings in production environment and generate data on their long term use (approximately 100,000 shots).
The results from this study show that the use of coatings can result in up to a 10x increase in die life leading to savings of about $25,000 on one campaign of 100,000 shots. The study identified coating application techniques and general requirements of a good coating material. It also resulted in a determination of fatigue data, modulus data for coating systems and fracture data from mechanical cycling tests. The study also resulted in a survey of industrial use of coatings in die casting.